planting seeds and nesting

The chickens have been nesting and so have I.  It's pouring down rain outside, and my plans in the garden are on hold until it stops and dries out a little.  I read through my garden journals the other day, and realized that almost every May and June it rains a lot.  Here in the Northwest, our nice warm weather sometimes doesn't arrive until July!  It's hard to believe that Fairbanks is having 70 and 80 degree weather, on my blogs I like to read Emily of Wild Roots Homestead lives there and posted about their beautiful weather.   We typically have our nicest weather in July, August, and September, and often times we have an indian summer in the fall.  October can be absolutely beautiful here.

Yesterday after the rain tapered off a bit, I quickly went out to the garden beds the girls and I had prepared over Memorial Day, and planted carrots, radishes, onions (I forgot I bought them a month ago, and they were starting to sprout) parsnips, and beets.  I wanted to get some root crops in the ground before the moon began to wax again today.  This is what happens when you garden by the moon cycles, sometimes I wait until the last day before the moon changes, and like a deadline that I've procrastinated on until the end, I get the seeds in the ground.  This is probably why this method works so well for me,  it gives me a definite timeframe to get the seeds planted.  It also helps with successive sowing of greens, carrots, radishes and beets.

Have I told you how much I love beets, chiogga, golden, bulls blood, and detroit are the ones I plant.  Why do I like them so much?  They are a dual purpose vegetable, both the greens and the tubers are edible and delicious, they do great in our climate, and no pests seem to bother them.  The dark red leaves of bulls blood beets really make a salad look great.  We have been eating salads for the last week and a half or so, and won't have to buy greens for many months, probably into early November.  I haven't even started to set out any warm season crops, it's just been too wet and cold. 

This afternoon I'll be at my daughter Tessa's district track meet, she made it in the top 3 for her division in the hurdles and 4x100 relay.  It's really fun for me to watch her, and many of the kids I've know since they were little, I'm hoping the rain will taper off this afternoon.

Inside I've been cleaning and going through stuff (uggh) where did it all come from?  I told my husband that many of these things are my tools, just like he has tools (lots of tools).  Mine look a little different, they are for canning, a pressure canner, hot water bath canner, jars, lots of jars, bee keeping supplies, soap making supplies, books on gardening and all my hobbies, sewing stuff, knitting stuff, baking and cooking supplies, like special pans and bowls, a yogurt maker, ice cream maker, dehydrator, pasta machine etc, etc.

There are office supplies, Christmas and holiday decorations,  kids school papers, coats, shoes, snow pants, snow boots, pictures and scrapbooking supplies.  When you see it all staring at you, it looks a little overwhelming, maybe you can relate.  Or maybe you have it all organized far better than me, I'm sure you do, this is not my strongest area.  Probably my biggest challenge as a mother has been trying to keep some organization in the home and things in order.  I definitely got my pack rat tendencies passed onto me from my parents (my mom does work on keeping it under control and in order), maybe it's inherited, my grandfather had a barn full of treasures, I remember it well as a little girl, being in awe of all the cool stuff he had in there.  I guess we are hunters and gatherers of valuable stuff like our books, that are a part of who we are, and have helped form us.

My goal is to get rid of anything I don't use, and store in tupperware containers the keepsakes that I don't want to display.  I will be moving all my shelves into our basement (it's dry), and put stuff not regularly used in there.  I want to try and keep the house more sparse, and easier to clean.  Several years ago we bought these nice metal shelves from Costco, and I bought clear plastic containers.  I spent time and worked hard at getting everything organized.  Clear plastic helps to see what I have stored in each container.  We live in the country and have mice, so the plastic containers also work much better than cardboard to keep things clean.  We have to regularly set mouse traps to keep them at bay during certain seasons, like when it's starting to get cold in the late Fall.

As I've been yakking away, I looked outside and noticed the downpour has stopped.  I'm off to finish mopping my floors, and attempting to put in order some of my treasures.
 
PS.  Somehow in our move I've misplaced my camera charger, I need to find it.  Henrietta's chicks all hatched out a couple of days ago, and she now is the proud mother to 10 chicks.  She was sitting on 12, one was a dud, and one died while trying to get out of it's shell.  We are lucky to have 10 that are alive and healthy, she even had them out in the pasture yesterday showing them all the good things to eat.  Once you have a hen raise chicks, you'll never go back to raising them yourself.  The other sitting hen should hatch out tomorrow, I thought she was sitting on a dozen, but when I looked under her yesterday I counted 16 eggs!